


Vanish

by peekycheekyfics



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:49:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19837330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peekycheekyfics/pseuds/peekycheekyfics
Summary: Sure, Steve could be an idiot sometimes -most times. Sure, their relationship wasn't perfect. Sure, it was weird for 3 kids to go missing within a 3 day span. Sure, there was an inter dimensional portal opened in the sleepy town of Hawkins, Indiana. Sure, it was unfortunate that Julie Miller was one of those 3 kids. As Frank Sinatra once sang, "that's life".





	1. Barb, Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an edited work that I posted on Tumblr way back when Season One was dropped! I had since deleted the original blog it was posted to, but after watching Season Three, it gave me inspiration to pick my stories back up. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

NOVEMBER 1983

Steve sat in the dingy interrogation room of the Hawkins Police Department. His eyes were directed at the metal table, unblinking. A heavy frown was set on his face and tears lined his bloodshot eyes. His heart was pounding and his stomach felt like it was about to hit the floor. The heavy door to the room opened with a slow squeak, and shut with a click.

Sheriff Hopper stood at the door, watching Steve Harrington with his brows scrunched together. He set his paper cup of coffee on the table and took a seat. A notebook and pen was sat neatly on the table in front of him. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened last night, Steve. Every. Single. Detail.” Hopper tapped the pen against the notebook, waiting for the teenager before him to start speaking.

“It-“ Steve’s voice shook. He cleared his throat and started again, looking up at Hopper. “It was a normal Friday night for us. I picked Julie up from her house at around five, then we went to my place,” Hopper nodded, writing it down.

“It was just the two of you?” Steve nodded with a heavy sigh.

“She doesn’t like my friends, so it’s usually just the two of us outside of school when we hang out,” Steve explained. He held his shaking hands in his lap, but his entire body was trembling. “We watched a few movies, then hung out at my pool with a few beers and ordered a pizza,” Hopper raised an eyebrow. “We weren’t drunk or anything,” Steve hurried to say. “It was just a few beers on a Friday night. We weren’t going anywhere, so we figured why not,” He finished with a shrug.

“And about what time was this?” Steve thought for a moment, trying to trace back to every second of time the night before.

“Around nine?” Steve questioned more than answered. He couldn’t be entirely sure.

* * *

* * *

“I just…can’t believe she’s gone, ya know? And that Byers kid.” Julie kicked her legs into the pool from her seat on the diving board. She had a creme colored puffer vest on over a burned orange knit sweater to keep the chill out, but the heated water from the pool felt nice on her bare feet. “Just,” She shook her head “… _vanished_ ,” Steve sighed and took the empty can from her hands.

“People don’t just vanish, babe.” Steve shrugged almost indignantly, squeezing the aluminum of the cans to make a popping noise. “People go wandering off all the time. They’ll find Bev and the kid.” He assured Julie.

“They’ll find _Barb_ , Steve,” She corrected with a roll of her eyes.

“That’s what I said. Don’t worry, they’ll find her.” Steve gave her a swift kiss on her cheek, then started walking towards the house. “You want another one?” Steve had a goofy smile on his face as he called over his shoulder and shook the empty cans in his hands.

“Yeah,” She called back. Steve blew her a kiss, making Julie roll her eyes and shake her head with a grin. As he disappeared into the massive house, Julie looked back down into the steaming, rippling water of the pool. Her painted toe nails stood out in the water, a neon pink. The lights under the water suddenly flickered. Julie furrowed her brows, and just as quickly as it started, it stopped, taking the brightness of the underwater lights with it. The water turned an eerie shade of dark blue with the lack of light. Like a chilled breeze, something made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Goosebumps erupted down her arms and legs, making her shiver. The unmistakable feeling of someone watching her was heavily present. Julie turned her head to look behind her.

“Steve?” Julie called out. No answer. “Steve, I swear to god. You know I hate when you do this!” Still, no answer. “You jump out from behind something and I will never talk to you again, Harrington!” Julie turned back to the pool, crossing her arms. The faint sound of feet on the cement surrounding the pool behind her was picked up in her ears. She whipped back around, noting nothing out of the ordinary. Julie’s heart started pounding. Something wasn’t right.

The increasingly terrified girl took one leg out of the pool, but before she could take the other one out, claws wrapped around her ankle, embedding deep into her flesh, and dragged her under the water before she could let out a scream.

“The pizza’s here so I got some ice and brought-“ Steve trailed off when he saw the pool area vacant. He stopped just outside of the sliding glass door, champagne bucket full of ice and four beer cans sitting nestled between the cubes in one arm, and the pizza box in the other hand. He walked over to the chair he was sitting in earlier and set the bucket and box down on it. “Babe?” He called out, his eyes shifting left and right. He walked over to the diving board and looked down into the eerily still, brightly lit water. “Julie?” He called again, growing frustration with the anticipation of what he thought would be a jump scare from his girlfriend. “Come on, Jules, you know my heart is entirely too fragile for this,” Steve’s voice cracked as he crept around objects that Julie could’ve easily hid in or behind. His search came up empty, and he stood with his hands on his hips, confused. “Alright, I give up! Please just come out so I don’t have a stroke at the age of 17,” Steve muttered the last bit to himself.

Steve walked back over to the diving board, perplexed. He knelt down, remembering that Julie had her legs in the water. There were water droplets on the board itself, but the area of concrete around it was completely dry. How could she have gotten out without getting water anywhere? He looked back at the bucket of beer from his crouched position. He only had two, but he did have an empty stomach…no, this isn’t the beer making him confused…was it? Steve noticed her boots still sitting near the diving board. She couldn’t have gotten far without those.

Steve walked back into the house. Maybe she snuck past the kitchen while he was getting ice? Yeah, that’s exactly what she did. He searched all the rooms on the first floor thoroughly, then moved to the upstairs portion of the massive house. He checked his bedroom last, making sure to look under the bed, through the closet, and anywhere else he could think of. “Okay, so I’m actually going to call the cops if you don’t come out, Julie. I’m starting to panic. This isn’t funny.

* * *

* * *

“I looked for her everywhere,”

“Everywhere?” Hopper questioned. Steve took a couple of breaths, his brain going into overdrive.

“My house, my yard, the pool, the pool house. When I was sure she wasn’t there, I called the police,”

“Julie didn’t have a reason to leave?” Steve shook his head.

“No, we were fine. I was inside for five minutes at most, and when I came back, she was gone. Her boots are still at my pool. Where would she go without them?” Steve’s elbows supported his upper body on the table and he put his head in his hands. Chief Hopper stared at the obviously distressed teenage boy sitting across from him, then scribbled messily in his notepad.

_#3 within 48 hours confirmed_


	2. Mile Marker 206

Julie came to, throwing up what she could only describe as a mixture between bile and mucus. Her entire body was shaking, trembling, and she tried to roll onto her knees. Julie blinked as she tried to get her bearings. She got one foot planted on the ground and rockily planted her other down. Her body wobbled left and right, but she was able to steady herself after a few moments and stood. She nearly collapsed back to the ground in pain. Julie could see the dark stains around the right leg of her jeans. She timidly pulled the denim up to reveal bloody gashes and a small chunk of flesh taken out just above her ankle. Whimpering, Julie shrugged her vest off and started ripping strips of the fabric, then promptly tied it around her leg.

Julie wiped the remnants of whatever she vomited when she woke up onto her sleeve. She looked around, breathing heavily, heart pounding.

“Steve?” Julie breathed out shakily and took a few shaky, fawn-like steps. Her voice sounded like she was listening under water with a slight echo. It felt like the energy was completely zapped out of her. The ground was covered in thick vines and roots, and everything was cloaked in a deep blue hue. Ash-like flakes floated around her and stuck to the ground. She held out her hand, letting them fall into her palm. They instantly disintegrated as they made contact with her skin, making Julie shake her hand in surprise.

This…this wasn’t _right._

Julie kept moving, tripping over roots until she hit a wall. She looked up and saw a ladder. Julie would have to scale the vines and roots to reach it, but energy wasn’t something she had an abundance of. She could feel herself weaken exponentially with each step and each breath, but she still gave it a shot. With a grunt, she pulled herself up to the first wrung. She smiled in victory, but it was cut short when she heard an otherworldly growl somewhere in the distance, then a human scream following behind it. Julie’s heart pounded in her chest so hard she thought it might burst straight through her ribs, making her movements sloppy. She pulled herself out of what she found was an empty pool and looked around to get her bearings. It was familiar.

“Steve’s patio,” Julie murmured. “I was…I was just there,” The chairs, the table, the pool floats, the diving board. It was all there, but everything was shadowed and covered in the ashes that weren’t quite ashes. Everything was…terrifying.

Steve’s house was covered in those grotesque roots, the inside of the house completely black. It looked like no one had been there for decades. Julie wanted to call out for Steve, but after hearing the noises, she kept it to herself.

Julie looked down and noticed that her feet were bare, just as they had been when she was with Steve. She looked over at the diving board and aside from the roots that encapsulated everything around here, her shoes were gone. With a heavy sigh, Julie carefully crept along the side of the house. The back sliding door at the patio was completely grown over, meaning she wasn’t getting in that way. Steve had to be inside. He wouldn’t just…leave her, would he?

* * *

* * *

Julie’s parents, along with Steve’s, were notified the night of Julie’s disappearance, since she had disappeared from their house and was last seen with their son. They took the next available flight from Denver to Indianapolis, and had immediately gotten Steve a lawyer.

“I didn’t do anything,” Steve tried to make his parents listen. His father gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“I know, son, but even if you didn’t do anything, they’ll try to stick it to you. That’s what they do. Open and shut case.”

Steve was promptly released from the station early the next morning, thanks to that lawyer. They had nothing to hold him; no body, no crime. That wasn’t the point though. Not to Steve. And when he heard that they found Will Byers the night Julie went missing, his heart dropped to his stomach.

The entire town of Hawkins was in mourning. Will Byers’ little body was found floating face down in the quarry. And now with the disappearances of Barb and Julie, people were starting to panic. Things like this just didn’t happen in Hawkins, Indiana.

Steve was a ghost within Hawkins High during the days following Julie’s disappearance. Between school work and joining search parties to look for both Barb and Julie, he was running on fumes. His hair was a mess, dark circles ringed around his eyes, and his face had a grey tone to it. He was thinner, which was an obvious sign that he wasn’t eating. No one sat near him in class, and his friends sure as hell didn’t talk to him. When your girlfriend goes missing, everyone automatically assumes it’s the boyfriend.

He had to find her.

* * *

* * *

Time stood still wherever Julie was, that or it just didn’t exist at all. There was no day, only the darkness that encapsulated her surroundings. Never-ending. Tears fell in a steady stream down her dirty face. Terrified couldn’t even begin to describe how she was feeling. The wooded area surrounding the Harrington residence felt eerie, desolate. She got to the road and tried to follow the vine covered pavement east -towards home. 

Julie passed the 206 mile marker on the side of the road when an ear-shattering screech sounded from behind her. The noise echoed like it was encapsulating her within its sound. She paused mid-step, turned and saw something that couldn’t exist. Not in real life. The humanoid shape stalked towards her slowly and opened its face like some kind of hell plant and screeched. Julie’s scream was just as ear-shattering.

* * *

* * *

Red, white, and blue lights flashed and reflected off of the trees and water. An ambulance, four squad cars, the county coroner’s van, and Hopper’s truck were parked surrounding it. He was the last to arrive, stomping down the small hill to the water.

“Please, no, no, no, no,” He muttered to himself, but he knew in his heart of hearts, what was waiting for him. The four-man team in hazmat suits were maneuvering something in the water.

“This can’t be a coincidence, Chief,” Deputy Powell said to Hopper as he held his hat to his chest. For the second time in as many days, they were fishing another body out of the quarry.


End file.
